


Seamstress

by feverbeats



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 18:18:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7278691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/pseuds/feverbeats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When I ran out of thread, I couldn't let go<br/>But that's not sewing, that's just poking holes</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seamstress

**Author's Note:**

> Additional warnings: consent issues, animal cruelty mention.
> 
> Lyrics from "Seamstress" by Dessa. What is the point of this story, you ask? No point, I was just worried about them.

There is a time, afterwards, where Kavinsky lies in the dark and tries to enumerate his sins to himself. He doesn't really believe in heaven or hell, but he was raised with both, at least a little bit, and it crosses his mind. He's stopped burning by now, and he's lying in the cool darkness.

Eventually the cool darkness resolves itself into something tangible. There's moss under the backs of his hands, he thinks. There's water in the air, so much it's barely breathable. Whatever, he's breathed worse.

He still can't move. He tries to think of the worst thing he's ever done and if it's bad enough to send him to hell, but it's hard. There's a lot in his head, some of it dream stuff, some of it not. Do dream crimes count against you in the end?

The first worst thing he did had happened when he'd survived something he shouldn't have survived and had had to stitch his own skin back together because mom hadn't been home to take him to the hospital (and anyway, he would have had some explaining to do).

He'd stitched his skin back up (knife in the ribs, but not deep, and it had missed all the important organs) and passed out.

When he'd passed out, he'd dreamed a solution to the mess he'd left behind.

Maybe there had been bad things before that. It wasn't like he'd never gotten in trouble as a kid. Trying to drown a cat, dressing wrong (those things are the same, in his memory). The cat had been his fault. The other stuff? Who knows. He'd liked lacey shit, too short, too long, ugly as sin. If he'd been born a girl, he would have worn really classy, slutty, gorgeous red dresses, but the only thing that had made sense on his skinny frame was torn up, stitched up shit from thrift stores his dad hated/would have hated/hates.

Nobody at Aglionby knows about that part, anyway, because it's not quite in line with the guns, drugs, and fast cars. To Kavinsky, it's all the same thing, but it doesn't always translate. None of his intentions translate.

Speaking of.

The other worst thing.

Kavinsky had been sober when it happened. For real. Oh, he'd had substances in his body, but he hadn't been high. Just a maintenance dose. Somebody'd had to be the responsible party, and Ronan had been _gone_. Kavinsky might not have looked it at the time, but he'd had a plan. He'd known what he wanted.

So he'd been in Gansy's car with Gansy's human dog, and what had he been doing there, when things had gone so wrong? Well, he'd been trying to _fix shit_. Believe it or not. He'd been trying to stitch Ronan back together, or stitch the two of them together into one.

Because Ronan had needed fixing, or so Kavinsky had thought. But there'd been a problem. Everyone else, Kavinsky could have cut dead and dreamed right back up, but he couldn't have dreamed Ronan. Because he'd never _got_ Ronan, and so his Ronan would have had holes.

Kavinksy comes back to himself, lying in the moss. He takes a breath of mist, unsure if he's sleeping, waking, dead. How would you make a Ronan? He's Gansy's bitch, but not the way Kavinsky wants him to be. He's a horrible asshole, but even that doesn't seem to mean what Kavinsky wants. Some things Kavinsky knows for sure: Ronan is something you can puncture, something you can wound with just a handful of clumsily-chosen words.

Don't think about Ronan, he tells himself. He tells himself to go back, to explain himself to anyone who might be listening. He never meant to--

Well, that's already a lie. Maybe there's no explanation for him. Nobody has to carve him from a dream, so nobody has to explain him.

But whatever Kavinsky does, he can't stop thinking that maybe Ronan is the worst.

Ronan had been naked. Totally naked, and that had absolutely been what Kavinsky wanted, but probably not the way he'd gotten it. Story of his life.

He'd told himself he could have dreamed a replica Ronan for himself, shitty as it would be, but he hadn't ever said it, because he'd thought it might be enough that Ronan had probably believed Kavinsky had already done it at least once.

Kavinksy had made a half-hearted joke about the fact that they'd been naked in Gansy's car, but Ronan hadn't said anything back. Kavinsky wasn't sure when Ronan's clothes had come off, or why. They had both been sweating, slamming in and out of dreams. 

Somewhere along the line, Kavinsky had said, "I'm gonna fuck you with my fingers." His tongue had felt lazy with sobriety. His _tongue_. He could've fucked Ronan with that.

"Yeah," Ronan had said distantly. "I know." Not exactly consent, but it had been close enough for Kavinsky. Was there a world in which Ronan wouldn't have done this? This had been exactly the Ronan that Kavinsky had thought he could puncture. The only sharp thing in the whole world had been Kavinsky, needle-like and hungry.

He'd worked his fingers inside and sucked in his breath, wondering if he was dreaming. But Ronan hadn't been reacting the way he wanted, so no, probably not.

"Hey," Kavinsky had said loudly.

Ronan had groaned. "This is so fucked up," he'd muttered.

"I'm gonna make you come," Kavinsky had said, like it was a threat, but he'd been losing his shit.

"Yeah," Ronan had said distantly. More consent. Great.

This whole thing had been so dirty and stupid, Kavinsky's fingers in Ronan's ass, Ronan passively pissed off, everyone half-hard.

Ronan had come, eventually. Kavinsky hadn't been anticipating anything in return, but Ronan had reached over and wrapped a hand around Kavinsky's dick.

It had only taken a few strokes for the edges of Kavinsky's vision to go white.

"Joseph," Ronan had said, and he'd laughed sharply.

Kavinsky's lungs had felt like they'd been punctured.

So now Kavinsky lies on the fucking moss and thinks about whether or not that's the worst thing he's ever done and if he'll go to hell for it. He doesn't know where he went wrong, with Ronan. He misjudged something, that's obvious. He thinks maybe the problem is that he wanted to fix Ronan, but Ronan is unfixable. Kavinsky doesn't understand it.

Well, he didn't. He thinks maybe now he does, and it's too bad. Too bad he's too worldly for perfect Ronan and perfect Gansy, too bad Ronan isn't human. Ronan and his damn bird, same thing. Or maybe Ronan isn't the inhuman one. Whatever.

He lies there thinking about hell for a while longer.

He doesn't go anywhere. Eventually, though, he realizes he can sit up. Looking around, he sees he's in a forest both like and unlike forests he's known in the recent past. It's empty, though. Nothing here to steal.

But maybe there's something here to make.

*

Piper spends exactly six seconds lying in the darkness. She's up and standing on the broken heel of her cute shoe before she can even take in her surroundings.

It's a fucking forest. Not the same fucking forest she just got done hanging out in, but a different one. Fantastic.

"Nice neck wound, cupcake."

If she has a neck wound, she has a neck. That's good.

She turns and takes him in for a second. "Where the hell are we?"

He flips her off. "The motherfucking afterlife."

Piper isn't totally sure he's right, but she doesn't say anything. She really hopes Colin isn't here. That would be awkward at best. But it looks like it's just the two of them. Maybe they'll have to repopulate the human race or something.

"How old are you?" Piper demands.

He shrugs. "Seventeen. Maybe eighteen by now, if you age when you're dead." He gives her a ghoulish smile.

Gross.

But then he does something that's not at all gross. He slams his eyes shut and dies. And this is absolutely _not_ the afterlife, because she can see the difference.

When he stops being dead, he has a pair of pumps in his hand. Bright blue, the _exact_ shade of Piper's eyes.

Piper stares at him.

"Again," she says.

So they go on. Kavinsky makes her things. Piper makes up things she wants, a different one for every day of the week. Sometimes it's makeup. Sometimes it's weapons.

"Hey," Piper says one day. "Do you ever wonder why we're the only dead people in this forest?"

"No," Kavinsky says. He's under a car, fiddling with something, fixing something. Gross also.

"I mean," Piper says thoughtfully, "suppose my eleven-inch wasp died. Do you think I could get it to show up down here?"

"The fuck," Kavinsky says. "No?"

"Actually." Piper taps her perfect nails on her shoe. "Actually, do you think you could make me an eleven-inch wasp?"

Kavinsky doesn't say no.


End file.
